Geoffrey Andrews wins 2018 AIAA Zarem Award for Aeronautics

Geoffrey Andrews from Purdue University has won the 2018 American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Foundation Abe M. Zarem Award for Distinguished Achievement in Aeronautics.

Andrews is receiving the Zarem Award for his paper "A Hybrid Length Scale Similarity Solution for Swirling Turbulent Jets." He has been invited to participate in the student paper competition of the 31st Congress of the International Council of the Aeronautical Sciences (ICAS) held September 9-14 in Belo Horizonte, Brazil.

"I knew I wanted to be an aerospace engineer since I was about 9 or 10 years old," said Andrews, who grew up in the small rural town of Long Valley, N.J. "I've always been infatuated with machines and flight; although I love being in the cockpit myself, engineering research allows me to indulge my passion for flight with a bit more intellectual creativity; having the privilege to play even a small part in the work of the scientific and engineering community is something by which I am both humbled and inspired."

Andrews is in his second year as a Ph.D. student in aerospace engineering at Purdue where he also earned his master's degree. He has a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from Lehigh University.

Andrews does more than research flight–he learned to fly in high school. "I'm currently finishing up my commercial pilot's license, but my real passion is for flying vintage and aerobatic aircraft," he said.

He chose the research area of hypersonic aerodynamics "because I feel like the world of hypersonics is one of the enduring frontiers of flight, and because I can't help but be excited by America's proud legacy of high-speed flight research."

AIAA Executive Director Dan Dumbacher said, "as a professor myself, I know the essential role graduate students play in expanding what's possible. I am inspired by the work being done by the newest generation of innovators."

Andrews's faculty advisor for the winning project was Gregory A. Blaisdell, an Associate Fellow of AIAA and a professor in the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Purdue University. His research interests are in the area of turbulence simulation and modeling, especially for applications in jet noise, compressible turbulence and vortex flows. He has previously served as a member of the AIAA Fluid Dynamics Technical Committee, Technical Chair of the 2011 AIAA CFD Conference, and an Associate Editor of the AIAA Journal.

For the past two years Andrews has worked at NASA Glenn Research Center as a co-op student. "Circumstances permitting, I would like to work there after I graduate and continue to do my part in making hypersonic flight a reality," he said.

Both Andrews and Blaisdell will be recognized at an awards luncheon at the AIAA Science and Technology Forum and Exposition (AIAA SciTech Forum) to be held Jan. 7-11, 2019 in San Diego, Calif.

AIAA Honorary Fellow Dr. Abe Zarem, founder and managing director of Frontier Associates, established the Abe M. Zarem Award for Distinguished Achievement to annually recognize graduate students, in aeronautics and astronautics, who have demonstrated outstanding scholarship in their field and who are pursuing graduate degrees.

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